When they have police lineups to have someone identify a suspect, where do they get the other guys? Are they simply other possible suspects? What if there was only one possible suspect, where do the other guys come from?
Well, outside police stations in the UK, there is often a list of required people to do the exact thing you mention (it lists height, hair colour etc)
You also earn a small amount of money if you get used.
May I add another question?
If you volunteer for such a line-up, and the witness picks you out, do the police then get suspicious of you and start asking you where you were on the night of…?
If not, what would stop criminals (before capture) from volunteering for the line-up to avoid suspicion?
I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve seen a lot of law and order.
Say there are 5 guys in a line up, all 5 guys are not criminals. 4 of the guys are just getting paid to be there. Basically imagine the crowd who gets paid for donating blood plasma. They put the witness behind the one way glass. If the witness picks the suspect out of the group of 5 random, similar looking guys than its a a pretty good indication that the witness got a good look at them. If the witness picks one of the other 4 guys than she can’t testify that the defendant is definetly the guy the witness saw robbing the store. She could still testify that she saw a 6ft man, brown hair, medium build robbing the store.
The police do not get suspicious of the other guys in the lineup, because they have no reason to believe they’re guilty. Its just a means of getting a positive ID on the defendant.
When I had to pick a suspect from a line up (pictures, not actual people), they used the real suspect’s mug shot and added pictures of various police officers, bailiffs, etc., faces only. I picked a bailiff. I don’t think he was later questioned for this particular crime. People don’t always remember everything perfectly, especially in times of stress or whatever, so I don’t know why the police would become suspicious of anyone in that circumstance. I’m not a cop though, so I’m really only guessing.
My mom (a co-victim, if you will) picked the real Bad Guy, but he plead guilty anyway.
In my case, here in HK, a plain-clothes cop (a white guy) came up to me in a watering hole late one afternoon in the central business district, flashed his ID, and asked if I could spare Saturday morning for an “identity parade”. I asked what happens if I get picked out by the witness, and he said “don’t worry - nothing, and you’ll get some beer money”. I was working Sat mornings at that time, so I asked my boss - a fairly prominent local citizen - if I could have the morning off to do my civic duty. Of course, he had to say yes. So I went along.
The suspect was shorter than me and had totally different color hair. I stood with 8 or 9 other white guys, while this elderly taxi driver walked up and down to see if he could spot the one who had assaulted him. He chose me. Moron. Everyone (except the suspect) got the equivalent of US$40 for his 3-hours. I’d do it again.
Well, if there wasn’t a Sienfeld episode where Kramer was hired as a professional lineup man, there should have been.
Police are moving away from the traditional “line-up” group method in favor of showing each person separately to the witness. Studies have shown that the latter method results in more accurate identifications. In the former method, witnesses, in an effort to be helpful, often resort to “most similar within that group” identifications, even if in an absolute sense none comes near to resembling the perpetrator.
The real perpetrator would probably be identified in the lineup, so it’s probably safer from his point of view not to volunteer on the hope that he’ll not be caught.
Two cops came into the common room of my college when I was a student (in Cardiff, Wales). Everyone went pale and hid their stash, but they said “it’s OK, nobody’s going to get searched - we just want volunteers for a line up.” A few of us went to the police station over the road, stood around for half an hour in a waiting room drinking tea, then one bloke got picked to join the parade and the rest of us got given £5 and told to leave.
There was. Search on “lineup” for descriptions of the scenes.
Years ago when I was in college, I was walking through the Administration Building, where the campus police had their office in the basement, and I was stopped by a uniformed officer. He asked me if I could spare a few minutes to be in a lineup, so I agreed. They never paid me a nickel. I think I got cheated.
If you believe The Usual Suspects then Keyser Soze is behind it all.
For photo lineups they have thrown in random pictures and this has resulted in some funny situations. A year or two ago there was a story in the paper where a famous actor (Clint Eastwood IIRC) was picked out of a photo lineup for something like assault. When the story came out the police apologized for including this picture in the lineup.
I attended a lineup in an aggravated two weeks ago; the suspect was placed with five other guys from the county jail who had his general build and appearance.
That is how that Eastwood bastard keeps getting away with it!
Ditto on asking round universities and colleges, also I’ve heard of police asking shop workers. They keep lists of people who will turn out, organised by physical appearance. I knew one guy who was asked back quite a few times on account of his being a tallish redheadwhich was, apparently, uncommon. A couple of years ago there was a pretty awful faux pas by the cops in irrc Norfolk, somewhere rural where few black people live at any rate, to make up the numbers in an id parade where the suspect was black they got some white guys to wear afro wigs and black their faces :eek: . The identity evidence was not found to be convincing…
I had to identify two people that tried to mug me at knifepoint in a lineup (they didn’t succeed and they should both be sorry that they picked me because they are in max security prison now). I gave the police a really good and accurate description on the phone and they asked me to come down to the station to do a photo lineup. The problem was that my description was probably too good. I had described two black males, one about six feet tall and one about 5’8"" about 19 years of age and so one and so on down to the exact shade of their skin, When I got photo lineup sheets, they had somehow found 20 people that matched my description exactly from some large photo databse. Even though I knew what they looked like, it was still really tough. In the end, I got them right and they both got convicted.
Wow, mugging you right there in front of the police…that was ballsy!
